The following U.S. patents comprise the prior art most closely related to the present invention: U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,337,394; 2,832,459; and 3,598,223.
In the processing and packing of fresh fruit such as pears, peaches, apricots, and the like, it is common practice to employ machines which peel the fruit, cut the fruit longitudinally in half, and remove the core and/or pit. It is then often necessary to grade the halved fruit pieces according to size, a task often performed by electronic measuring apparatus. Alternatively, the fruit halves may be fed into a slicing machine which cuts the fruit pieces into longitudinal slices.
Whether the cored fruit halves are fed through a grading machine or a slicing machine, they first must be oriented cut face down, with their longitudinal axes colinear with the direction of travel into the slicing machine or grading machine. To accomplish this orientation task, there are several devices known in the prior art. These devices generally include shaker tables along which the fruit pieces travel, the tables including irregular surface features which manipulate the passing fruit pieces to orient them properly.
The prior art apparatus has generally included shaker tables with longitudinally extending channels along which the fruit pieces travel, with lateral guides and other surface features to direct the fruit pieces into channels or recesses in which the fruit pieces may fit only when oriented properly. These devices have been generally successful because they avoid bruising or abrading the fruit pieces, while being relatively successful in orienting the fruit pieces as desired.
Operational experience with the prior art devices has revealed several drawbacks, however. One notable problem has been that the fruit pieces occasionally do not align themselves longitudinally as desired. For example, a statistically significant proportion of pears have lengths similar to their widths, so that they cannot be manipulated according to their external shape into the proper longitudinal alignment. Furthermore, the prior art fruit orienting devices have permitted too many opportunities for the fruit to become lodged in grooves or jammed together by lateral guides. In these instances, the output of the orientation device is interrupted while the jam is cleared manually, resulting in a momentary loss of productivity of the down-stream fruit processing equipment. If these interruptions in the output of the fruit orienting devices occur too frequently, the sum total of these momentary losses in productivity of the entire packing operation can become a significant economic factor.